Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 98 - French Invasion of Russia Part 4: Barefoot Borodino

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Napoleon finally gets the battle he wants, leading to one of the bloodiest days in European history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Follow us on twitter @lions_by Join the subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/LionsLedByDonkeys/

Hello and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Live by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me from an undisclosed location in quarantine is Nick. Yes, still. But almost done.closed location in quarantine is Nick. Yes, still. But almost done. Yeah, almost. This is great. I got to see the doctor today. Yeah.

Dude was great. Honestly, the best doctor's test I've ever had in my life. Did they actually test you? Because I know like nobody can get tests unless you're a fucking rich person or like a basketball player right now. Oh, yeah. I got an ocular pat down. You got an ocular pat down for a virus yes uh so in case anybody is not uh they gave me a mask an always sunny person uh that that means that they just kind of looked at him they gave me a

mask they saw i didn't have a fever they had me six six feet away from somebody i was good to go should be out tomorrow, hopefully. That's good. I mean, I would expect they would have tested you by now. No, they can't. Yeah, of course they can't. So this is part four of our French invasion of Russia series. If you want to start now, that's... Actually, I have a feeling

that some people will start now, because the biggest battle of the entire war will be covered in this episode. But go back and listen to the other three, so you can know everything. Hold off on it. Wait till the end. Go back to the beginning. Have snippets of the end again, and just keep

going from where you left off from the beginning. You should actually listen to the entire series backwards so you can hear messages from satan uh that's what i'm hoping that's a fucking party so when we left you last week uh the french grand army was uh had finally cornered the russians in the city of smolensk and we're uh priming to a siege. Yeah. Sounds like it smells. I mean, it's about to smell real bad. Napoleon kept holding on hope that the Russians would sally forth out of the city and fight him in the open field. Is that a command? I only remember that from Total War because like when someone besieged you you had the option to uh fight or sally forth

command it is it was always really really stupid um it was always much better just to auto battle and napoleon's kind of dumb here because why would anybody march out in the field and fight him uh he has these at this point the strongest army in the world and uh it should be noted that the russians absolutely did not want to do that uh big gration and barclay the two main russian commanders had both managed to actually withdraw out of the city and pull behind it on like there's there's a river behind it and then a hillside and they kind of just sat up on the hillside and watched. Oh. And they left command to the city to this poor bastard called Doktorov, mostly because they knew nothing good

was going to happen in that city. Did they like that guy? Probably, maybe not. I don't know. Barclay probably hates everybody that works for the Russian army at this point. Their whole point was when they retreated, well, tactically withdrew out of the city

onto that hilltop uh it was to keep the routes of retreat open uh for the main force that was in the city they didn't want doctor off to like fight to the last man or anything well let me rephrase that but gratian absolutely wanted doctor off to fight to the last man uh barclay knew that shit was dumb uh but yeah their whole point was to keep uh routes of retreat open oh i see now the beginning of the battle led to a strange scene um because there was one river that cut through the area and if there's one thing that anybody has learned from the last three hours or so of the show is that the french army really needed to clean water um and you know various

other things but mostly water so they didn't die. And the river was clean or as clean as a city runoff in 1812 could be. So they were leading their horses down there to drink and they ran into Russian soldiers leading their horses down there to drink. Oh, do they just go, all right, truce this time. We're thirsty. Yeah, actually they did. They just kind of talked talked to one another traded cigarettes and uh and like alcohol uh probably and like just kind of hung out for a little bit

um and then when they realized they had to go they had like betty everyone good luck and then pulled back to their positions turn their cans around start shooting at one another because that there are through the artillery that is fucking cool like aim a little low. We don't want to hit Peter. Yeah, he gave me this cool tricorn. Now, first of all, tricorns are very out of style by 1812. Let's get that shit right. It's probably Shaco. All right.

Let's just fucking calm down here. If we're talking hats, all right, got to get that hat game on point. So around 200 guns were firing into the city. There's three entire army corps, along with an entire army band behind them dropping sick beats. They all assaulted the city while the city is being shelled, because they're kind of stupid. But also remember that the last episode that their shoes have all wasted and fallen off so that while they're wearing their dress uniforms to go into battle almost all of them are barefoot that fucking blows and i'm the type of guy if i

step on a pebble i'm done for the day oh definitely uh like it just imagine an entire field of legos you have to march through. And I mean, there's probably a good chance that some of them did. I mean, there's a good chance that someone tied cloth or whatever around their feet or looted shoes from dead soldiers that had fallen by the wayside. But there's a good chance a fair amount of them were completely barefoot. Just nail horseshoes. And remember, they're also all starving to death

and riddled with disease. So, like, they're probably shitting their dress uniform full barefoot and, like, hoping they can shoot a Russian and then eat him real quick. Because none of them have been fucking eaten in days. That fucking sucks. Now, there's a problem with all this uh napoleon as we said wanted the russians to meet them in the field but there's for there's several reasons for that both he and barclay knew that his army was better in the open but also because napoleon

remember his plan was to meet the army in the field beat it and then be like see alex we can be bros again so he never planned to besiege anything which yeah like president trump he forgot that you can just use ladders to climb a wall so he brought none you don't need none he brought nothing to besiege a city so his troops stormed through the outer suburbs of the city made it to the city walls and then we're just forced to try to climb the motherfucker with their bare hands like world war z yeah or like if they watch the free solo movie on netflix like don't worry i got this where's my chalk yeah could you imagine like the whole army is just free solo climbing like that's so sick but it's really easy to shoot them now but we can't we just have to respect the

art i bet all of their names are brent uh and they all went to usc uh so like they made human ladders when their hands failed because remember these guys are all starving to death they don't have the strength to like go arm over arm on a brick wall so they just climbed on each other's shoulders um just like throwing them up just like we practiced in trapeze class uh this led the russians on the other side of the river um under the command of barclay to open fire hold on so you're talking like feet on shoulders man ass above head those guys have been shitting themselves yes absolutely so they're definitely shooting a good time on the bottom why do

I have to be the big guy I would definitely be on the bottom of the pyramid you know I'm like 630 and 240 but one of first of all I would have been dead already here's what I would have done horrible disease I would have shot myself immediately I would have shot myself by day three like I would have shot myself immediately. I would have shot myself by day three.

Like, I would have shot myself when we'd gone to the range before we even started going to Russia. You think they went to the range? Yeah, it's like they qualify, right? Absolutely not. These weapons don't even have sights on them. They're red on their fucking range.

They're definitely red on their med bros uh for all the dysentery everything private kasabian why are you putting that musket to your face you have only not eaten in four hours fuck this i'm out so barclay saw uh like this wave of frenchmen like throwing at the wall. And he's like, I guess we should also shell the city because we'll hit them. And now there's a problem. We talked before about the French guns were a bit older. The group of all gun system is definitely not revolutionary anymore.

And their crews were also a little less trained than the Russians, which is kind of surprising as Napoleon was an artillery officer. But the rounds were falling short pretty regularly right into their own troops. What? So that meant the French soldiers attacking the city were being shelled by both their own cannons and

the Russian cannons. That is horse shit. So to the artillery officers credit, if we can give them any credit, they're like, hmm, our cannons aren't working. Yeah, we're killing soldiers, all right? Queen of battle, guys! Or king of battle, whichever, I don't remember.

They bring a mortar out. Yeah, it's the king of battle. But also the king of buddy fucking. So they're like, well, our cannons... So the cannons that i'm talking about aren't artillery obviously it's 1812 these are direct fire weapons uh they're not firing an arc so they bring in mortars uh to fire over their troops and into the city uh and they're like okay they'll get around that'll get around this whole fratricide thing. Now, Smolensk was a city mostly made of wood.

Ah, I see. So when the mortar shells exploded into the city, the whole fucker caught off on fire. And the wind was kind of strong that day, so it churned the fire into a firestorm that spread throughout most of the entire city, killing thousands of civilians. Oh my god.

Now, it also killed a lot of the entire city killing thousands of civilians oh my god now it also killed a lot of the russian defenders as well and this horrified fucking everyone even french troops who were horrified like the artillery officers stopped firing because they're like oh my god what have we done i wonder if one of them was like ah yeah first try got it uh well that one guy would be napoleon uh who watched who watched the entire thing and declared it a grand spectacle napoleon is kind of an asshole nailed it first try and you know this might sound like you know if this is world war ii or world war one or even some of the older wars it would not be that unheard of, especially like medieval times, Romans, whatever. It was super common to completely sack a city and burn it to the ground.

Kind of not common in 1812. Remember, it's supposed to be gentlemanly warfare. You don't slaughter civilians by the thousands. Yeah, like rules and shit. Yeah, and there are rules that Napoleon respected until he was pissed off in Russia and hadn't washed himself in a month. He didn't have a wash wagon with all the wagons he brought? You're right. He definitely had an entire wagon that was like a bath.

If anybody was not covered in their own shit... It was just some dude that had to scrub them down. Yeah, and it was probably heated with his own body warmth. Here, go do jumping jacks and jump in the emperor's pool. Fuck. Now, this one for two days. The siege, not the jumping jacks.

That would have sucked. And Napoleon gained nothing. He was still on the outside. The city was burning to the ground, and the Russian defenders were burning alive along with civilians while fighting the French off and also trying to put the city at, which they

mostly succeeded. How did they put it out i imagine buckets i think there's a bucket brigade also like they made sure buildings collapsed onto themselves rather than spreading it uh spreading the fire because it was mostly contained to the old city section um i still like picture dudes just all in single file passing buckets well also like oh somebody grabbed a musket i see a French guy come over the top. Yeah, just in case. We're just hitting him with a bucket. Also pouring buckets

of water on the French. The French going like, yes! For the love of God, do it again! Please! I smell so bad! Now, Barclay decided that enough was enough. He had defended the city. He had set out what he had set out to do, which was actually fight the French, which if you remember, everybody demanded that he did so, even though he did not want to do it in the first place.

So he ordered the troops under Doctor off to retreat out of the city, but finished burning the city down. Oh. So the French couldn't have it. Well, it's already kind of charred a little bit it turns out the French did most of the work for us suckers and they also had to blow the bridges up behind them across the river

now this as with most orders that Barclay gave during this time was incredibly unpopular as we've kind of pointed out military leaders in the 1800s cared more about honor than common sense and thought they must defend this tactically pointless city to the last drop of blood, especially the Russian noblemen. Some of this unpopularity, as we have talked about, is because Barclay was German, not Russian. So Russian nobles thought he was a traitor of some kind.

So Russian nobles thought he was a traitor of some kind. A Duke, a Russian Duke booted open the door of Barclay's command post and insulted him to his face by calling him quote, a sausage maker. Ooh, deep cuts, deep man. Like,

yeah, I mean, I guess the term kraut hadn't been invented yet. I don't know. I don't know. There's some good sausages that I would like. I think maybe, I mean, obviously he's German, so he's a German sausage whatever but also it may be because

he was calling him because Barclay wasn't a noble he would eventually made a Russian noble but he was not a German noble so he's also calling him a commoner the next morning the French moved into the burning city full of corpses and little else while the French took the city they had won nothing

they failed in their attempt to crush the Russian took the city, they had won nothing. They failed in their attempt to crush the Russian army. The city that was captured was little more than a graveyard and a pile of ashes, and they still could not resupply themselves. The French and Russian armies suffered about the same casualties, but by this point, being wounded in the French

army, normally a grim idea in the first place because it is 1812, was now virtually a death sentence uh the medical corps had completely run out of supplies uh and the supplies and pretty much just booze and like linens to wrap good enough and a saw to chop off legs oh the bone guy so napoleon decided to put his hands in and make everything worse uh he was unable to give the wounded any supplies so so he decided to give them money. Now, this actually goes back a little bit.

It was pretty common. He did this in his old campaigns when he was in Italy and Austria because it meant that while the army doesn't have supplies for you, but you can use this money to go buy food and whatever you need out in town or send somebody to buy it for you. money to go buy food and whatever you need out in town or send somebody to buy it for you it was um i guess you could say it was a good idea if you were completely detached from the situation uh because russia was hard and um and awful and giving them money made them a target um for murder and robbery from their own comrades. Oh. Also, there was nowhere to spend the fucking money. So, like, you just did that for no reason. Do you think the dude that gave out the money, he was like, here you go, and then he mugged him later?

He, like, told his friend, he's like, hey, if you kill that guy, we'll split it. I feel like he just did it immediately. He's like, here you go, and then he pulls out a gun. I mean, they're fucking wounded in 1812. You don't get to do much except just, like, wait wait 20 minutes and they'll fester from gangrene and die. It's not even a long con here. Just give it some time.

I'm not patient. I need my money now so I can spend it nowhere. Yeah. While all this was going on, elements of the French army began to march towards Moscow. While doing so, they ran to a Russian division under the command of General Osterman Tostoy. Nice. Now, they were pretty close to the city of Smolensk, so the French immediately thought this was a counterattack to retake the city. But it wasn't.

They had actually gotten lost on their way to the city, marched in circles for the last 10 hours, and had no that someone smolensk had even been captured smolensk so they just like walked into oh fuck the french and the french were also like oh fuck the russians they'll be to any idea what was happening now this actually would have been a really great opportunity for the french to quickly surround and destroy them because hey we caught an russian element out in the open right but but the general put in charge of maneuvering around them was suffering from heat stroke and he was too delirious to carry out his order so they also got lost. Delirious.

I see a coke vending machine. I'm sun drunk. So Osterman Tolstoy was able to escape. The lost soldiers the lost Russian soldiers since I have to differentiate now everybody everybody's lost, also joined up. They found 30,000 other soldiers around Valentina Gora under the command of General Tuchdov.

And they're like, hey, we're still here. Just come and join us. And pretty much all Valentina Gora was. Nice. They joined Tuch's Rough Riders. They found an area like, hey, if they start marching towards Moscow, they have to come through here. So we'll delay them so Moscow has time to prepare for the incoming French army. So do you remember when I was talking about how much of a micromanager Napoleon was?

Right. Yes, of course. So the same goes for his command style, like actively on the battlefield. He always commanded from the front and rarely delegated tasks to his staff. This was not the case anymore. Now, we have said before that he is getting older, he's sick.

There's some theories that he was already suffering from stomach cancer, which would eventually kill him in quite a few years so that was sapping his strength he also apparently suffered horribly from hemorrhoids which made it harder and harder for him to sit on his horse for a long period of time

yeah his butt sad I got the butt pimples I feel like when Napoleon leaves from His butt's sad. I got the butt pimples. I feel like when Napoleon leaves from the front, he probably looks like Mickey Mouse when he's orchestrating. Probably. There's firsthand accounts of him riding up and down the line and telling division commanders exactly what to do

and getting holes shot in his pants and stuff like that. He's the type of guy to go to the first aid station and accidentally bump into everybody's wound and like pat him on their wound. He's trying to give someone an attaboy and pat some on the fresh stump. Yeah. But he's the emperor. Somebody can tell him not to do that. They're like,

Oh, thanks, sir. Please stop faking me. So he hand waved away the command of, of on Valentin Agora to Murat, which, as we know, is a bad idea. To be fair, he was seconded by Marshal Ney, who was not as bad at his job as Murat, though I will come back to eat those words later on. Ney does not have a great. He's problematic later on. Ney does not have a great... He's problematic later on

in this war. They would take command of the assault on Valentin Agora, but Murat thought that this could be handled the same way he handled everything else through a frontal cavalry charge. The problem was that the Russians had the high ground, which is

bad if you're leading a cavalry charge it was also overlooking a swamp a pretty deep swamp at that so the weak horses remember the horses now are horribly cavalry worthy like their charge is a trot now because if they move any faster they will die which thankfully miras fine with but the horses went into this deep swamp and kind of slowed down to a crawl and got stuck which made them incredibly easy targets uh the russians shot them to shit for a few hours um and then just kind of like all right time to go you know we we slowed them down the high ground so good um you see the the russians weren't trying win. They were just trying to slow them down. And they succeeded.

They didn't need to stick around and wait to get flanked and get destroyed. It's almost like Obi-Wan Kenobi when he took out Anakin. Because he had the high ground, he just slowed him down. Darth Vader came back. And the Russians also had lightsabers. The history books tend to leave that part out. Their midichlorian count was much higher than the French counterparts. I'm really surprised you know what that is

because you do not watch star wars i am reaching to my depths of star wars lore right now and in two words i'm already out so when the russians retreated they did technically seed a tactical victory to the french which

will become common already is common but there was a tactical victory over the French, which will become common. Already is common, but there was a tactical victory over nothing. Like we won the field, but we didn't win shit. It was a type of war that nobody was really used to. You know, everybody was supposed to be happy that they took the battlefield, but it's like,

but we didn't accomplish any of our goals. And, and officers like, shut up. We won. Yeah. And this time the French managed to lose significantly more men than the Russians. Now, it wasn't, you know, people had started to ask questions.

Like, why wasn't Napoleon here to take command of this battle? So Napoleon had to quickly sweep all that under the rug. You know, he can't take any personal blame. So he, in order to turn that into a victory, he did just that. He called them all heroes. They won the day. The battlefield's theirs.

So he started mass promoting people and giving out legions of honor until everybody was happy again, which was something he did a lot. Everybody just gets awesome awards. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he had to make the soldiers feel good about themselves. I think I'd rather have water.

Yeah, I think I'd rather not be in Russia. This is like that meme of, like, where the leaking water container and someone slaps duct tape over it. Yeah, but there's still a hole in the duct tape. Yeah, it's the water, except you just put your mouth to the hole because you haven't drank water in a week. except you just put your mouth to the hole because you haven't drank water in a week. Now, it quickly became clear that Napoleon really had no idea what to do next. He had marched the most powerful army ever assembled deep into Russia, had taken a major city.

He had technically beat the Russian army in the field every time they met one another. But his galaxy brain genius plan simply wasn't working. Because for his plan to work, the Russiansians had to accept that like his plan i think this like it for his plan to work the russians had to be like oh okay so they want to fight in the open let's go do that okay gotcha like it makes no sense yeah i mean the russian army was still opposing him and the Tsar, like he had promised, refused to negotiate as long as the French troops are on Russian soil. Another problem was he had led his army into nothingness. Smolensk was a corpse of a city and they couldn't even camp there. It would do nothing for them, but retreating was something that could not be entertained.

He couldn't even think of it because that would be a dishonor. Right. think of it because that would be a dishonor right napoleon had effectively led himself into a trap because the way his brain worked literally the only thing he could do was keep advancing despite everyone knowing him included that this was a really fucking dumb idea i mean it's the russians really didn't do much to beat napoleon napole really well. I mean, I could beat myself up pretty well. It's just Napoleon the scene from Fight Club where he's

kicking his own fucking ass. Except every time he punches himself he kills like 20,000 soldiers. Ooh. Napoleon handled this about as well as he'd handled everything else up to that point. He screamed at everyone and anyone around him about everything, blaming everyone else for his fuck ups. He began to beat his soldiers with a riding crop when they pissed him off, which is what?

Which is interesting because he, for as much as I could find, had never fucking done that before. You're telling me he penned his own guys? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And remember, you know, he's supposed to be the the the soldiers general right and everybody loved him because how well he treated soldiers i i've read a little bit from when um he was an officer in italy um when he won a lot of glory when he you know helped during the revolution and stuff like that i couldn't find much about him beating his soldiers which leads me to believe he didn't do it and even though it was common but like he was doing it

now he's beating the fuck out of people maybe he was the one getting beat up didn't want to put that in the story obviously but now he's you know the emperor can't beat up an emperor i mean he was a noble before he was i mean he was a very very minor noble yeah but maybe there were some jock nobles and he was the nerd noble he went to a pretty he went to uh the same french military school as most other people that they did but if you were soldier and you laid your hand an officer you get shot uh so you just kind of took your ass whooping um i mean there's a good chance that maybe he did do it and a lot of nap Napoleonic history is kind of skewed Napoleon scene and something of a decent light for,

for a lot of people, as long as you're not British. So it's, it's hard to tell, but it is interesting that the emperor is going around beating people with stick. That's awesome. So at this point,

Napoleon decided that he could force the entire Russian army into battle. If he attacked Moscow, which remember he kind of sort of already decided he if he attacked Moscow, which, remember, he kind of, sort of, already decided he was going to do, but not really. He wasn't committing. It was like when you ask your girlfriend what do you want to watch, and I don't care. That's a whole thing, because then I want to watch

something that I know for a fact she doesn't want to watch, because I like to watch really cool stuff. Like, League of something gentlemen. Fuck, I can't even remember that. nobody likes to watch that for some reason I don't know why the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because it's a fucking terrible movie made Sean Connery quit acting which is impressive

chappy multiple times yeah but I admit it's a bad movie I like it now at this point it's his generals like so we go into Moscow like yeah we'll figure out when we get there we'll cross that bridge once we get there yeah it's like when you lose something so it's like well it's around here somewhere that doesn't fucking help like oh well we'll see if we you know we invade moscow

you know whatever but that's when he finally decided he was going to do it the problem was moscow is 250 miles away he also knew he he only had at most about two months to make it work his entire plan because the russian weather when winter set in would make campaigning impossible even for someone that was okay with soldiers starving to death or being killed by freakish storms of insects the russian weather put on its russian uniform and to be fair, the Russian winter had already been kicking his ass pretty good. So he's like, well, I really don't want to see what winter would do. Everybody in Napoleon's court told him this is a supremely bad idea. All of his marshals said no, except Mirat, to be fair.

Mirat never said no. Pretty much everybody's like, we have to stop. We have to go back. If we start marching now we'll get out of russia before winter hits so he insulted everybody that opposes idea and told them to fuck off back to paris if he thought his plan was bad so it's literally you're either with me or you're going back home all right probably which probably means you're going to prison and bad things are going to happen to you is Would you say prison would be worse than Russia?

Well, some of them survived. I imagine being an enemy of the emperor in prison, you're not going to survive the next year and a half, which is about as long as he has left on the throne at this point, actually a little bit less than that. And also the downside is if you did survive and when the bourbon restoration happened the bourbon king was definitely going to kill you so like uh it's it's hard to tell um

now the officers in napoleon's camp were kind of split the officers had been with him for years um had been kind of pushed to the back at this point because they were like this is a bad idea we shouldn't do this you know when he told him you can fuck off back to paris they all stayed but their their time as a favorite was done which is a problem they're the most experienced officers in the army uh but napoleon surrounded himself with newer more enthusiastic officers um now heinrich brunt was one of those new officers yep strong young and tight new officers i'm gonna skip right past that uh he said quote if we had been ordered to conquer the moon we would have answered forward which is not a great sign that's a really dumb fucking thing to

say heinrich uh the in short they're all sycophants they knew that if they continued to like we talked about before if we continue to fall in the point we'll keep getting glory eventually we'll become a marshal or whatever he'll make me he'll make me nobility they had they had like put their entire cart onto the truck of napoleon and um even when the older officers who had done the same thing effectively were like nope this is a step too far. Probably shouldn't do that. Not a good sign. I mean, if one of your junior officers says, yeah, if you order me to invade the moon, I'll do it.

It's a really dumb, it's a problem. You cannot think for yourself. This is an issue. I try to trick all the new LTs into having me do stuff that I think is funny, but I want them to tell me to do it so that I can blame it on them. I mean, that's pretty easy to do.

They're lieutenants. So I set up this slingshot in the office one day. I tried to attach the sledgehammer to it. I was like, hey, LT, you want to see if this will work? He's like, yeah, sure, why not? I was like, are you telling me? Sucker!

And I went forth. You've activated my trap card it's one way to get away with something now i think a lot of this attitude uh in the french army of you know we'll just corner and beat them they'll be the end of war um or why are the russians doing what they're doing comes down to the french to not understand the kind of army that they were fighting the french and their allies had been used to what i've talked about before like gentlemen's warfare people generally didn't hate each other and enemies would even hang out between fighting which kind of happened between the russians and the french as well um as one person said they killed without hating which is weird um and i feel like that's like a weird social consciousness thing that was just deeply ingrained in dumb imperialism but

soldiers saw nothing of like nothing wrong with surrendering um if things were hopeless because knowing certain customs and courtesies and traditions um they would eventually just be let go home when the whole thing was over or even let go and rejoin the army when the battle was done. So like, well, if we don't win, I might not die.

I mean, remember the, the vast majority of soldiers that died in war did not die in combat. So they thought like really combat was the least dangerous thing that they would do. That's true. So absolutely. No,

these things were the case in Russia. The Russian army was tempered with a damn near genocidal warfare against the people of the Caucasus and the Turks. If you were captured, you would be murdered. Probably terribly. Oh. So, like, surrender was just not something that they understood. Furthermore, the normal Russian soldier, unlike the normal French soldier, had no life outside the army. Remember, their service was effectively a life sentence. Their

life was the army. They weren't going to go home. Was the contract like 20 something? 25 years. Remember, only 10% would see the end of it. There's a very good chance you just get brought right back into the army in a time of emergency like some of them had.

Their attitude was much different. It's kind of like what the mythos that eventually surround the French foreign Legion is, you know, the Legion is our homeland. The army is their life. We can't surrender. So they didn't, they fought to the death.

Um, this led to a common saying about the Russian soldier of the time was he would have to be killed and then pushed over because he would just refuse the retreat without orders. The idea that they were just going to be slapped around into a lopsided piece was something that was absolutely never going to work. Something people

slowly started to understand as the march towards Moscow began. Wherever the French army went, they found few roads that were still serviceable because as the Russians retreat went, they found a few roads that were still serviceable. Uh, because as the Russians retreated, they cut down trees,

um, or like dug giant holes, uh, whatever to hinder their advance. These obstacles would take hours to clear. And it, um, then when they were done with that,

they, they would look up and see the entire horizon lit up and burning as the Russian army and sit everything in front of them on fire. That's so depressing. It gets worse somehow. So, we've talked about the, like, the shitty heat and dust of Russia at the time. So, the smoke

mixed with that dust, and it kind of made breathing impossible. Some people just suffocated and died. What? The Russians kind of accidentally made toxic gas they meant to do that yeah probably through all of this the French

routinely fought a constantly retreating Russian rear guard action it would deploy to fight the French keep them rooted in place for a little bit and then withdraw again while the Russians were finally getting the upper hand infighting was gripping the command so they couldn't really take advantage of this they still weren't really in a position like all right time to counter-attack because they kind of still are weaker

um so people claim that the huge amount of non-russian positions uh in positions of authority were giving their plans over to the french because they're dumb and they thought like how could they know where all of our units are well because you're defending moscow it's really easy to track down right um russians began to see spies and traitors everywhere um and the russians began to uh be to plot behind the scenes to kill their own comrades and in many cases succeeded what how like remember how we talked to all the french and germans and everybody else that were in positions of authority like their division commander like just get poisoned or whatever in his tent because he was german and they were seeing all this because they were

paranoid well it might sound like there's a good chance like oh the russians have to notice that they're winning they They totally didn't. They thought like, oh, if they get to Moscow, we are fucked. So they were panicking like they're about to get annihilated. So they started seeing spies and plots everywhere. And I mean, there probably were spies. There's always spies, but not like they thought. Somebody in the grassy knoll.

Every grassy knoll is sus. Now, barclay began to worry about his station if he was going to get fired uh and and he thought well if i get fired they're probably going to kill me at this point so he was desperately trying to find somewhere he could finally give up the people wanted and order his army to stand and fight and prove that he was not a traitor which is incredibly stupid. Could you imagine now if you got fired, you die? I mean, there was a good chance that he was going to be assassinated before he got

fired because his army really seemed to like him. But at the same time, if he did get fired in this situation, there's a good chance Begration would have had him killed because Begration hated his fucking guts. And also Begration was a goddamn him killed because Begration hated his fucking guts. And also, Begration was a goddamn prince. He's going to do whatever the fuck he wants.

Imagine I got fired tomorrow. I die. Take him out back. Get a new one. So you got fired in Texas. Dead. Oh man, I would have been killed so many times. You had a lot going on. I'm like a cat i got nine

lives like a specialist with the dui i can't i won't go down now uh so barclay knew fuck i gotta come up with a plan i gotta fight these guys uh so he started coming up with plans every single plan got shot down by bigration despite the fact that barclay was in charge because progression knowing that he was a very high-ranking noble, he knew he could just like, yeah, that plan's not going to happen. I'm not going to pass it along. So he was trying to get him fired. And there's some evidence that Begration had people plotting to kill him too, but he was making his job impossible to do. but he was making his job impossible to do.

So, you know, either or, but migration had, I had a lot of cards on the deck, but, but, but migration was not alone in his hatred for Barclay. Russian nobles were spreading the hatred within the ranks and writing letters to the czar,

begging him to fire or even execute Barclay. When Barclay rode by his own troops, Russian soldiers called, called out, there goes the traitor. Ooh, that's bold. He is the commander-in-chief of the entire Russian Imperial Army.

That is bold. Those guys wanted to die. Probably. Some say they had nothing to lose. So Barclay picked a spot to make a stand outside of Vyazma, but the rear guard just couldn't hold on long enough

so he could set up his position. So he had the rear guard go out, fight the French in their normal retreating pattern, but their plan was to delay long enough where we could dig in and fight the French off. Didn't work. So that led to the Russian army to, again,

withdraw. This made Moscow, the capital city full of nobles and commoners, began to be gripped with panic and terror because they thought the next step, like the French were going to be at the gates of Moscow. This led nobles to flee the city en masse or hide their wealth in the walls so it couldn't be stolen. That's the first place I'm looking.

It did not work which we will get to. So hilariously and kind of off topic, a German guy took this opportunity to griff the governor general out of a ton of money, claiming he could build a giant blimp that could fly over the French army and pour fire down onto them.

Like liquid fire. He stole the money and disappeared. That's so good. I love that guy. Now, blimps had been used, like the arrow cores existed at the time, but like nothing like that. They were like surveillance balloons

that were like tethered to the ground. That'd be an awful job. And like, it's funny, as the French army gets closer and closer, everybody's asking the governor general where his blimps are. Where are my dragon blimps? I don't know.

I gave that trust, that trusting German guy a ton of money and I haven't seen him in weeks. Did he have a glasses with a fake nose and a fake mustache? So the same, the same governor general is kind of a dickhead uh he had anybody who spoke a language other than russian uh in moscow drug out to the streets and beaten to death what so so like maybe he he he deserved to get his money stolen from him wow that's like when i go to your house and i say hola and you're beating me and i just beat you with a bat like yeah like i work for ice um so meanwhile the czar finally caved to the endless stream of hate letters uh and fired barclay which you know it's just cancel cancel culture run amok in russia it's unfortunate uh

he got like the first thing of every like it he he got pre-internet viral infamous and fired all these nobles are saying that i should fucking fire you so i guess i have to um so he appointed katuzov in his place now if you remember katuzov um was the guy that he had put in charge a long long time ago in the last war against Napoleon and the Tsar kept butting into his war plans leading to a disastrous defeat and then the Tilsit Treaty so he went back to Kutuzov the problem was at this point Kutuzov was almost

definitely senile really he was pushing 70 years old which is old as fuck for 1812 yeah even Clausewitz thought the guy was losing his shit. He would never write anything down for fear of spies.

He was just on the battlefield. I smell cinnamon rolls. You've ever played a game of telephone? Yeah. So he's doing that with military orders because he refused to write anything down. He would issue orders to random people regardless of rank uh if

he had a like if he just thought of a plan he'd point at like the nearest guy like you muster the division he's like sir i'm a private he's like i gave you orders go spaceships on the lawn uh car hole is closed yeah he is um like fucking he's like a hundred years shy of blaming well actually he's not under your show he's like 20 minutes shy of blaming the jews for everything um those goddamn globalists stole my war plans uh goldberg was undefeated the wwe it's real to me damn it uh now the, the problem was, like, he would issue random orders at random times, leading entire divisions to march off without their commanders

or without the rest of the army, all without nobody having any idea what was happening. I want Thai food. At other times, he would just change his mind, not tell anybody the plans to change, and then watch as half of the army wandered off, not knowing what was happening, because the original plans to change nobody had been told yeah never mind i can go for

some begogi that's two different regions sir i give you orders fuck okay so katuzov took command of his army and came to the same conclusion as parklay that there's fucking no way that you should fight the fresh this guy's fucking nuts which is amazing because he was like drooling like dim-witted and dumb and he's like no barclay was right this is a bad idea drooling his brain from his nose just absolute tapioca brain dripping out of his fucking ears he thought you know maybe if we had some prep time like we dug in we might be able to make this work which again same plan Barclay had so he picked a position close

to the village of Borodino to dig in trenches gun pits and walls would be built they cleared out everything in front of them to make open fields of fire and built redoubts that would all have to be assaulted one at a time and each redoubt could support one another if it was being assaulted it's actually

it's god damn wow it would not look out of place in like the western theater of world war one now i say redoubts they were kind of like trenches kind of uh it's a word that they use they use a different word as well just think of them as bunkers now the only the only thing katuzov was worried about was that he made the position too strong, and the French would simply have a good sense not to attack it. Because he wouldn't have attacked it. He's like, nope, too strong, going around.

However, this would not be a problem, because as we had pointed out, Napoleon was kind of dumb as hell. Murat's scouts saw the Russians going to work and reported back to Napoleon, who screamed, quote, bon appetit. What? Yep, because that's what he wanted.ussians were lining up to fight him despite the fact i see they were working he was probably eating something he also probably was eating something he was kind of fat now i remember uh or as they uh uh nicely point he had become rotund oh that's somehow worse even

murat this point is like yeah we probably shouldn't attack that he ordered his forces to attack the forward position which had become known as the Shevardina Redoubt it was a much much further position forward it was kind of a scout thing

you would have to attack this before you attacked everything else it was a good idea it was a speed bump sure Napoleon should get out thing like you would have to attack this before you attacked everything else and um it was a good idea it was a speed bump sure napoleon should get with that german guy about blimps and fire i heard you had a good uh good resume from the governor general of moscow now uh napoleon ordered his force to attack the chevardina readout and they succeeded after hours of fighting and heavy losses, and the Russians refused to retreat without orders

from Kutuzov, eventually those orders were given, and they retreated. After the redoubt had been reduced a little more than a pile of corpses and couldn't be used by the French. Everything just coming up Russian. Now, the Shevardina redoubt was far away,

was far enough away that they couldn't like actively shoot at one another from them uh they could shell them but like it was far enough away that you weren't like taking musket shots but that did lead uh the the french army to have to form up and wait for orders to attack the rest of the readouts while under artillery fire which is incredibly stupid. In preparation for the coming battle, as we've talked about before, the soldiers all changed into full dress uniform,

despite the fact that they were all definitely barefoot by now, because they had just marched another 250 fucking miles. I can see myself on that toe. Now, one French officer joked that if Kutuzov was able to put the battle off for just a few days, he'd have won as the rest of his soldiers would have dropped dead from hunger. Nice. All the night before, Napoleon was out

recounting the Russian positions from 2am until 9am. Was he, though? Yeah, actually, he was riding back and forth on his horse. I feel like he was probably not looking at the Russian line. He was looking at something else probably. Well, it was dark, so he couldn't see much. Now this had the unfortunate side effect of him literally working himself into sickness.

And because it was dark, he had missed most of the Russian positions in the left flank in his final plans. As well as coming down with a mean cold. Which, remember, this is not good at the time. Colds will kill you in 1812. Yeah. Now, we actually have as physician notes that he fell ill and he could not urinate, with the exception

of a few drops, which were, quote, thick with sediment. Our boy was stricken down with the chunky piss. That dude had milkshake coming out of his ding-a-ling. Oh, man. That's like when I go to a bar and I fucking want to fuck around. I say, is this supposed to be chunky? And people are in there just to see their reaction.

Except his piss was chunky. Uh, now Napoleon did suffer from a, uh, a problem that is retention of urine, uh, or known as a milkshake. Uh,

yeah, but a little chunky pee wouldn't slow down the emperor. And the next morning he was, uh, at three dot rallying his men for the coming battle at 6 a.m. the battle began with an artillery duel of nearly 1,000 guns one that the

Russians actually had a huge advantage in most most of the troops committed to the opening stage of the battle where had been getting shelved the entire time as they were within the Russian gun range and they were just getting mauled they stood just getting mauled. They stood there getting blown to pieces for the command to advance.

Veteran soldiers laughed at the new ones who attempted to dodge the incoming cannonballs. As old soldier's wisdom said, it was all kind of pointless, because if you're going to die as already decided, you should just sit there and take it like a man. They're probably like, fuck, kill me. I'm not dodging anything.

They just didn't care um also it's it's important to point out my veterans also had to tell these newer soldiers not to try to stop the cannonballs so like when they when they hit when they hit the ground and said rolling they actually looked at they're moving kind of slow and you can just kind of kick them out of the way but in reality they would still tear your fucking leg off or explode just like the patriot yeah i mean that's actually the first thing that i thought of when i read that is like that cannibal looked like it was moving really slow but then it fucking ripped his goddamn leg off uh finally the order to advance is giving and storming into the village of borodino before the russians took it back in a counter-attack

oh really the russ Russians actually counterattacked? No, it was thought of that they might. Elsewhere, French forces charged into the redoubts, taking and losing them in quick succession as the Russians immediately fought back in control of them. As soon as one French attack would falter, another one would be committed into the battle.

As soon as the French took a position, they'd almost immediately lose this. And the reason for this was exactly how this whole thing was designed the Russian redoubts were built to be impossible to hold if you took them over they were shaped like V's with the point facing

outwards and their backs open so if the French stormed one and took it they would then be defenseless as the supporting redoubts poured fire into them I mean it's fucking genius design yeah also like I said the French scouting had been so bad that when

they took one or two of these positions they had no idea there's a third fourth and a fifth which also immediately began to murder them in large numbers so they took like they knew they yeah they were recon by blood yes they took the first year down like oh fuck there's a whole lot more of these each time this happened the french simply

launched another attack over the course of three hours these positions would exchange hands no fewer than seven times oh each side's army would be killed off and replaced by the reserves and the cycle would continue infinitely. Oh, I would hate to... If you're the third reserve unit, maybe it'll stop at my unit. You can't even see the positions anymore because they're just all corpses. Fighting was

so horrible that the muskets of the infantry would simply no longer fire. So, for people who are unaware, when a musket is fired so many times, the barrel gets full of unspent pattern debris. This is known as fouling. It makes them useless.

The only thing you could do is attach a bayonet and stab and club people to death. You can't shoot anything out of it. I can imagine the dudes that had that. They said, alright, go charge. Go be useful. I would go make sounds. Boom! I would fall go charge. Go be useful. I would go make sounds. Boom.

I would fall down and pretend to be wounded. This reduced just about everybody in the fray now, which is hundreds of thousands of people, into stabbing and beating one another to death while artillery on both sides fired canister shot into the masses of troops at point-blank range. And then you got me in the back. Boom! Pow!

Good job, sir. You're the only working rifle. Yes, I am. It is a really good day to be in the artillery, I must say. It's like that scene from Braveheart, like, sir, if we open fire, we'll hit our own men. Yeah, but we'll hit some of theirs too.

That sounds terrible. So by 10am, the French had taken every single position once again, so Bagration ordered another counterattack. He was shot in the leg and thrown from his horse, and was eventually pulled from the battlefield. He would die eventually

of those wounds, but he was not dead yet. And rumors of his death began to race through his army, causing Russian morale to plummet, but they refused to retreat because the aggression wasn't there to order them to retreat. So if he died, no orders given. Well, they thought he was dead

and he was circling the drain pretty goddamn fast because getting shot in the leg with a. 50 caliber musket ball pretty much shatters the whole fucker right and then he was thrown from his horse which probably broke other shit but his men were real sad but they still refused to retreat

I can only imagine that he actually did die and they didn't retreat because they didn't get the order because he's dead I mean that's effectively what happened they wanted like their morale was shot, but they're like, well, nobody told us to run yet, so I guess we're staying here. We're just waiting for the word.

Yep. So French forces under the command of Ney and Murat eventually captured the nearby town of Savanoskoy, I think it's pronounced. I probably butchered it. This allowed them a perfect glimpse into the rear of the entire Russian army. There's a problem, though.

They've been fighting for hours, and they did not have the manpower to take advantage of this. Like, fuck, we can get reinforcements in here. Like, if they would have taken this route, they would have gone right into Kutuzov's camp. Ooh. They sent messages back to Napoleon

demanding that he commit the Imperial Guard into battle, exploiting this gap. Now... But on the back of the letter is, do you like me, yes or no? Circle yes or no. Napoleon just didn't respond. He probably circled maybe.

So he had been sitting where he had been sitting since the start of the battle. He could not see the gap that... On the toilet, trying to squeeze out a chunky pee. he had been sitting since the start of the battle. He could not see the gap that on the toilet, trying to squeeze out a chunky pee. He couldn't see the gap that Ney and Mirat had created because he was so

far away, he couldn't see the battlefield, which was not like Napoleon. So instead of mounting his horse and looking for himself, something that he definitely would have done before, he just kind of sat there and did nothing. And because the French had no real overall chain of command,

nothing got done without Napoleon. So that gap that Ney and Mirat saw just sat there. See, Napoleon did that to his own army. It turns out the greatest enemy of Napoleon's army is napoleon pretty much

because i mean that's what i'm hearing i don't like to like say what ifs a lot but there's it is hard to see a possibility where if he committed the like the 25 000 man strong imperial guard which are his best troops to attack you know a senile old man in the rear of the entire russian army it would have changed the entire course of the war. They're only his best troops because they have shoes at this point. They might. They probably at least aren't so disgusting looking they would offend the emperor because that was their whole point.

But, eh. Thanks for the shoes. Meanwhile, the Russian camp, Kutuzov, was doing kind of the same. He was just kind of sitting there. But when a Russian commander, any commander, ran for him to ask him for reinforcements, he would simply give them without really any coherent strategy

other than just keep killing French soldiers. So, like, if somebody came to him like, I need such and such at the right flank, yeah, yeah, go ahead and take it. There was no overall plan other than just keep plugging gaps. Just keep, whatever we have to do, just keep fighting. According to Klauswitz, which was, who at

this point was acting as Kutuzov's second, but was really kind of commanding the entire defense at this point, because remember, Kutuzov is not, he's in a different fucking galaxy. He's chilling. According to Klauswitz, he said the general contributed virtually nothing to the running of the battle.

Instead, he just kind of let his second do whatever he wanted, which turned out to be enough. Kutuzov was so detached from the battle that it never dawned on him that he should replace the commander of the artillery when he was killed. So when the artillery commander got winged by a cannonball, nobody took command of it. Massive Russian reserve just sat around waiting for orders that wouldn't come.

Instead, he had himself a picnic. He just sat down and had lunch. I haven't had a picnic in a while. I don't think I've ever been. I mean, you sit down like a blanket and you eat from that. I've definitely never done that

I'm worried about the bears I'm more worried about just getting dirty this caused almost every officer of the Russian army to pass their own orders like well if we're not getting orders we'll handle it ourselves this this cause like total and complete confusion within the ranks

which actually kind of worked many of the successful russian counterattacks happened by pure luck with two commanders who had the same idea running into each other along the way and just kind of teaming up hell yeah that's fucking sweet they voltroned yeah like

oh you're you're going to attack the right i'm going to attack the right hell yeah buddy where's the general where's the general oh he's having a picnic oh uh other times when orders did get passed down the officer the order landed with would just uh like arrest the delivery person thinking it was some kind of spy so yeah the russian army just kind of directed itself like a herd of cats. I mean, you... Effective cats.

It worked. It's hard to see how it worked, but it worked. It is incredible to me that a 70 year old man who was... a nearly 70 year old man who was not probably sure where he was out commanded Napoleon,

but he did. But by noon, the french attacks were grinding to a halt and the revsky readout which was only noon yeah yeah but they've been fighting since 6 a.m yeah still it's only noon so the revsky readout which was the center of the entire formation of of the russian defenses was back in in Russian hands with few French successes were kind of localized. Like they would take something here, they take something there, but there's never really any coherent push to take anything all at once. And independent Russian commanders popped up new lines of defenses wherever the line

began to crumble. It wasn't until 2 p. 2pm that Napoleon would order another attack on the center. In two hours he sat there doing nothing while French forces were battered with artillery while waiting orders. So like at this point when the Russians retook the Revski readout, the attack

was not launched again. They pulled back and waited for two hours getting shelled while Napoleon was just squeezing on a drop of piss you're just sitting there in the queue just getting hammered yep there's actually um the the the first-hand accounts for the french soldiers are like so grim that they're just like sitting there um and uh one guy said i found, a bread crust in my uniform pocket. So I offered it to my friend next to me to split.

And then my friend got hit in the face with a cannonball. So I rubbed his brain matter off it, then ate the bread crust. Well, you know, you gotta be optimistic. More for me. I'll be like,

at this point, just leave the brain on, get some of that prions in you. Now, when Napoleon finally did launch the attack on the redoubt, it began with a cavalry charge. Now, this probably wouldn't have worked, but it

was made easier by the fact that the anti-cavalry ditches that were dug had been filled with corpses during the battle, so they could just ride right over them. Oh, see? Effective. Yep. This opened a hole for the infantry to pour into the redoubt as well, taking it from the Russians. When they did, they found Barclay's men had formed another defensive line right behind it, and they began firing back into them.

This caused the French to fall back once again, and then they were raked with canister shot for good measure. Oh, fuck. By now, both sides were thoroughly exhausted and resorted to firing artillery at one another once again, and no real offensives began to be formed. Around 6pm,

full 12 hours later, Holy shit. the guns fell silent and the Russians withdrew. It was only then that Napoleon finally mounted a horse to survey the battlefield. The redoubt's ditches and trenches had vanished, replaced by piles of dead bodies and dying people as far as he could see. There was like tens of thousands of wounded people just slowly dying everywhere.

Wherever the line was held, it had been reduced to little more than a pile of corpses six to seven men deep. As a reserve just kind of stood on the bodies of the fallen to keep fighting only to die and add to the stack. Why are they saying, alright, whatever. I mean, we have to look taller to scare it away. Well, I mean, they were the line.

So like, if they weren't going to retreat they didn't have orders to. When the reserves died the line had to be replenished. So they just ended up turning into their own defense. I'll just stand behind the bodies at that point, if it's six to seven deep. Some definitely did. That's definitely cover.

Now, the French won the field, as they always did, but they had won literally nothing. 29,000 men of the French army were dead, and around that same amount wounded. Though, like we said before, being wounded was a death sentence. So chalk that up. Oh, yeah.

49 generals were killed, along with 19. Holy shit. Along with 1,900 other officers. Now, to be fair, the Russians suffered about the same dead and wounded and lost Prince of Gratian, who died of his wounds. suffered about the same dead and wounded and lost Prince Progression, who died of his wounds. This whole battle is kind of famously

brought up by historian Gwynne Dyer, who describes the Battle of Borodino as if, quote, a fully loaded 747 crashing with no survivors every five minutes for eight hours. That's a good way to put it. Yeah, it was the single

bloodiest day of combat of combat napoleon would ever command throughout his entire life and it would be the bloodiest day of european warfare all the way until the first day of the psalm in 1916 holy shit napoleon's decision to not commit the imperial guard would not only cost him a real victory in this battle it would cost him the entire war, his empire, his throne, and eventually his life. The victory at Bordigno would be so costly that the grand army would never

recover. Meanwhile, the Russians would abandon Moscow when the, when the French army haggard, starving and mostly dead at this point, I assume they look like zombies from The Walking Dead. Oh. They stumbled into the city on the 14th of September and found

the entire city empty. We took it. We took the capital. To make matters worse, it had been stripped of all food and supplies and burnt to the ground. Now, there's actually some historical argument here,

whether the Russians set the fire or French soldiers set the fire on accident. And I think it's a little bit, I think it's a little bit of both because there was definitely people left behind to burn the city to the ground, but the fire probably wouldn't have been so big if there wasn't so many fires going all at once from the soldiers trying to stay warm or cook what little food they had and the city is mostly wood so just the french troops coming in like the first ones coming in on a recon knocking over another lantern yeah that's kind of one of the theories that happened is that they were searching a house and knocked the lantern over um what but also there's

a there's a fair amount of evidence with dispatches and stuff that the Russians definitely ordered the city burnt to the ground. So there was Napoleon sitting in a dead city capturing the capital. No victories, no czar. Sitting on a statue like, I did this. And that began

Napoleon's descent into madness. And that is what we will pick up next week! This episode. Napoleon's descent into madness. And that is where we'll pick up next week. This episode. I think more people died in this episode than probably any other episode. It's hard to tell. Definitely more cities get burnt down.

We got that going. Yeah. That's for sure. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you for supporting the show. You've probably noticed at this point, due to the pandemic that is sweeping the globe and people being like Nick, being quarantined, not being able to do much, or being short of money because they can't work, we've begun releasing our back catalog of bonus episodes to try to

help with that boredom I know it's not much we can't do we're a fucking podcast we can't do much to help with this but hopefully laughing at dumb movies or video games can bring some levity into being locked into your house for until the

fucking who knows when so Nick hopefully you get off quarantine some levity into being locked into your house until the fucking who knows when. So Nick, hopefully you get off quarantine and you can join me for part five in the studio. Until then skin to skin what

happens in the studio stays we've talked about this more like my skin to your hair than skin. I am Armenian. So, uh, it, it's actually my,

um, my layer of protection. Um, now if you like what we do on the show and you, you haven't been somehow laid off, uh, or, or fired,

um, you can support the show. Uh, so, I mean, that's about as optimistic as this show gets. Again, we will see you next week for part five and Napoleon's ascent into madness in Moscow.

Nice. Later, everybody.